"This text is about what the future should or might look like and turns the analytical gaze towards the phenomenon of future orientation itself. The contributors examine how the future as a temporal abstraction is constructed and managed, by whom and under what conditions. This is done through exploration of the contested future(s) of various sciences and technologies - not least because the experience and projections of late-modern society are increasingly framed by techno-scientific language and visions of the future are dominated by new technologies. The optimism expressed for the future is coupled with a quality of inevitability in the development of particular technologies. The contributors to the volume all share a concern to understand how it is that some futures come to prevail over others, why once seemingly certain futures happened to fail, how other futures are marginalized as a consequence of the dominant metaphors and motifs used in everyday life, and the consequences of particular framings of the future. They do not see the future as in any way the result of a linear or naturally evolving process. Rather, that the future of science and technology is actively created in the present through contested claims and counterclaims over its potential. Like all discourses, ""the future"" is constituted through an unstable field of language, practice and materiality in which various disciplines, capacities and actors compete for the right to represent near- and far-term developments."
By:
Nik Brown,
Brian Rappert
Foreword by:
Barbara Adam
Edited by:
Andrew Webster
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Edition: New edition
Dimensions:
Height: 219mm,
Width: 153mm,
Spine: 23mm
Weight: 657g
ISBN: 9780754612636
ISBN 10: 0754612635
Pages: 296
Publication Date: 23 November 2000
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Professional and scholarly
,
Professional & Vocational
,
A / AS level
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Contents: Foreword, Barbara Adam. Time, Temporality and the Social Construction of the Future: Introducing contested futures: from looking into the future to looking at the future, Nik Brown, Brian Rappert and Andrew Webster; Futures of the present: from performativity to prehension, Mike Michael. Language and the Social Rhetoric of Technical Futures: Forceful futures: from promise to requirement, Harro van Lente; The narrative shaping of a product creation process, J. Jasper Deuten and Arie Rip; Organizing/disorganizing the breakthrough motif: Dolly the cloned ewe meets Astrid the hybrid pig, Nik Brown; Talking about the future: metaphors of the internet, Sally Wyatt. Passed Futures: Lessons from failed technology futures: potholes in the road to the future, Frank W. Geels and Wim A. Smit; Science fiction’s memory of the future, Hilary Rose. Future Science, Future Policy and the Management of Uncertainty; Scripts for the future: using innovation studies to design foresight tools, Bastiaan de Laat; Genetics and uncertainty, Annemiek Nelis; Expectations and learning as principles for shaping the future, Luis Sanz-Menéndez and Cecilia Cabello; Contested health futures, Tom Ling; Index.
Reviews for Contested Futures: A Sociology of Prospective Techno-Science
'This is a valuable book for researchers concerned with future trends as well as present realities.' Medical Sociology News 'Contested Futures is an edited collection which addresses issues of paramount concern to sociologists, scientists, politicians and everyone who now understands that current technological trajectories, particularly in modern biotechnology, are catapulting us into unknowable futures...The collection...has the potential to make a valuable contribution to all those who now see themselves as having a role in shaping what counts as techno-scientific innovation.' New Genetics and Society
